super ponte

Similar to the German concept of a Brückentag—taking an extra, intervening day off to bridge the gap in what would be a longer break from work and to make a longer, uninterrupted weekend when a public holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday, the Italian language has fare il ponte—to do the bridge.
Unlike in the States where most holidays are observed on the nearest Monday, there are not moveable feasts in other parts of the world and one isn’t given compensation if the holiday fell on a weekend. This year, however, owing to a late Easter and the following Easter Monday (Pasquetta), the celebrations bump up against secular public holidays with the anniversary of Italy’s liberation (Festa della liberazione) falling shortly afterwards on the twenty-fifth and then, if you can put off returning to the office long enough, there’s International Workers’ Day (Festa del lavoro) on 1 May. These happy quirks of the calendar are rare but most welcomed.

harm to ongoing matter

Via Boing Boing, for scale and to gain an appreciation of what’s been redacted and cited and deemed not suitable for release to the public, we are presented the Mueller Report (previously) in microfiche, contact sheet format. There’s still plenty to read in between the blacked out lines.

pivot points

In collaboration with a construction research company, a design studio has produced a line of proof-of-concept prototype concrete elements that can be moved and arranged, despite weighing several tonnes, with ordinary human amounts of strength, through cleverly articulated rocking, rounded edges and balancing the centre of mass for each component. Once the forms are delivered, structures could be assembled in situ without heavy equipment. Watch video demonstrations at designboom at the link above.

pawnographic

We regret having missed this scandalising graphic design choice from December of 2017 when the new season’s World Chess Championship logo had its debut, but it is still resonant since the world (on-line and off) is puerile as ever and wont and eager to prise a dirty joke or snicker out of any situation. The studio behind this pugilistic emblem as well as the client organisation that commissioned it called out as something obviously tantric responded in a healthy way, however, appreciating the furore and the focus it brought.
The world is lousy with bad design and there’s a lot of unintended suggestiveness—though of course sex sells, but overall attacking what’s bold or avant-garde makes design as whole boring and more conservative, brands and associations not wanting to risk what might be made the butt of ridicule. This obsession—which I am sure will go into overdrive with candidates developing their campaign imagery—seems to me like a surrogate for that persistent though mythical legend about subliminal advertising (by definition, if it is subliminal, it does not register) that had people trying to find (and in some cases swearing to it) nudes in ice cubes for the past six decades.  More to explore at the link up top.

8x8

colossus: a robot firefighter worked alongside five hundred heroic first responders to help save Notre Dame

hyperacusis: a look at the rather long history of building acoustics and being driven to distraction

ben day dots: the studio behind the fantastic title sequence of Into the Spider-Verse

poe’s law: an internet adage that it’s become tougher and tougher to distinguish extreme views from parodies thereof

stumped: a look at the observation posts of World War I disguised as trees

the secret-sharer: tech companies contract armies of people to tweak and improve digital assistants

mush, mush: a team of Boston Dynamics Spot Minis working in tandem haul away a big truck

a vast symphony set in stone: tourists and scholars reflect on the cathedrals’ historic (and landmark) role and what it means to them  

fluctuat nec mergitur